


Dear Ex-Lover

by TheCurvedWritingDesk



Category: Midnight Poppy Land (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Heartbreak, Love, Reunion, lost lover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25458142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCurvedWritingDesk/pseuds/TheCurvedWritingDesk
Summary: Poppy is finally reunited with Tora. There's only one obstacle in her way.
Relationships: Tora & Poppy Wilkes
Comments: 115
Kudos: 167
Collections: My favorite MPL





	1. I Apologize

**Author's Note:**

> I only write poetry when it hits me but I've been scribbling quite a bit lately, my own personal stash, only for me. Here's something for you though. ♥
> 
> Please let me know what you think. 
> 
> Song: Elephants by Rachael Yamagata (haunting.)

** Dear Ex- Lover **

It had been four years. Four years since she had last seen him. The alarm he inspired causing her book to tumble from her hands and fall to the ground at his feet. He smiled at her, a limp cigarette between his lips as he stood before her, clothed in arrogance and regret in front of her park bench. “Damn Bobby, still a butter fingers I see,” he breathed, not as unaffected as he pretended.

She blinked at him, tempted to pinch herself to check to see if she was dreaming, as she had for so many years after his departure. This couldn’t be. He had left in the middle of the night, high on adrenaline and rage, leaving her in radio silence until she had convinced herself he had died a nameless death in a gutter on Ares Street. “How can this be?” she whispered, eyes wide as she gazed at the only man to ever truly hold her heart.

He shrugged, “I missed ya,” came his only reply. He stood there awkwardly, as though the smile he had plastered on like old paint might crack and crumble at any moment.

“Tora,” she breathed like a long time wish finally brought to fruition.

‘Come back to me Bobby,’ he pleaded with his eyes. Two golden globes burned into her soul, daring her to deny the fire they stoked within her.

“I’m with someone else now,” she explained, trying to ignore the pain her words caused them both.

“Leave him,” came his terse reply, “Regina’s peak. Midnight,” he tossed like a gauntlet at her feet, reaching down to collect her discarded book like her soon to be discarded lover. He pressed it into her hands, his fingers brushing hers, reminding her of what they once had.

She watched as he strolled away, her already reaching for her notepad. She needed to write, to try to express the sentiment, the emotion causing her this distress. 

_I’m writing this poem for you,_

_To clarify, this is not a love poem._

_This, is an apology letter._

_You see, you are perfect._

_Awe inspiring in your_

_Reliability, punctuality, thoughtfulness,_

_Your dedication, loyalty & honesty._

_You, are everything I had ever wanted in a man,_

_And for a while I thought that was enough._

_Like browsing the aisles of a grocery store,_

_I checked off your traits on my shopping list._

_You were perfect._

_Except for one thing. I didn’t love you._

_Not the way I loved him,_

_Like a barely contained tempest_

_My emotions so raw I thought_

_He belonged on Maslow’s hierarchy_

_Somewhere between air & water._

_You were perfect; boring, predictable._

_He, was a lightning storm of pounding rain,_

_And booming thunder._

_I said: ‘I love you’ because I convinced myself that if I uttered those three little words,_

_I once kept only for him;_

_I might... feel something._

_I knew it was a mistake the instant they left my lips_

_But like so many mistakes, once done, rarely can they be undone._

_So, I apologize,_

_For being the cause of your broken heart._

_When you held me, I feigned contentment._

_And for that, I apologize._

_\- Poppy_

She tore out the page from her notebook, folding it, creasing it like she was sure to do to his heart and stuffed it between the pages of her book after scribbling his name on the top. He would find it twenty minutes later when he showed up with the coffee he had promised to bring her. But she; she would already be gone; back to the arms of her long lost lover.


	2. Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fleshed out this story the other day. I'm gonna see if I can tell the whole thing through poetry. It'll be a little creative writing exercise for me. 
> 
> Song: Happier by Ed Sheeran

**Monster**

Tora stood at the precipice of indecision as he watched her flip pages as slowly as he made life decisions. She fingered each page lovingly, as though caressing and savouring every word her eyes devoured. He had missed watching her like this, like the tide was slave to the moon, life always found a way to push and pull him back to her. There reunion had been a long time coming, elongated by his own insecurities. Would she still love him? Forgive him? Want him? Each question plagued him, hounding his sanity. He had been watching her for days. He knew about her new lover. He couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. The monster within him, that _was_ him, cried out too loudly for her. He reflected on the first moment he had come face to face with his own demon. The devil she had once claimed to love. 

_I hit someone,_ **really** _hit someone, for the first time when I was eight._

_His teeth scraped the skin from my knuckles,_

_Like a styrofoam cup rubbed against concrete._

_Twin waterfalls leaked over his broken smile,_

_As blood pounded like thunder in my ear drums._

_And I realize now this was a pinnacle moment,_

_When my fist connected to his cheekbone_

_For the second time, I was too far gone._

_My fists flew, driven by the pain of_

_Every healing bruise hidden beneath_

_My clothes._

_Standing, heaving, bloodied knuckles, sweaty face_

_I looked down on my broken masterpiece,_

_And as I stared into puffy swollen eyes,_

_I saw a reflection that scared me._

_Beaten into this thing I had so long feared,_

_I finally understood,_

_Why_ he _hit me._

_Tormentor & victim had become one,_

_And I was a,_

_…Monster._

Shaking off the momentary memory, he approached, slowly, carefully, waiting for her eyes to drift just over the edges of her pages and back to a time that had once being labelled ‘forever’ but was now only a distant remembrance. When her book slipped from her fingers as suddenly as he had fallen out of her life, he couldn’t help but tease her.

“How can this be?” she whispered as though speaking to a man returned from the grave. A specter sent to resurrect all the shattered tatters of what was once meant to be.

He was shrouded in shame, regret and the arrogance that his love was stronger than the others. That if he only loved her hard enough she would deny him nothing. “I missed ya,” he offered in pitiful lieu of explanation. The mask he had so carefully crafted slipping a fraction.

“Tora,” she breathed; his name a beacon of hope, signaling for him that the invisible thread that tied them together was still tethered. “I’m with someone else now,” she explained, her words straining the strength of their bond yet useless to break it. His heart twisted, something ugly and vicious that lived within him rearing its monstrous head. This was why he’d stayed away for so long; fighting his need for her like a starving man refusing food. He could abide it no longer.

“Leave him,” the terse reply tumbled from his lips, “Regina’s peak. Midnight,” he ordered her like a general to a footman, refusal signaling imminent catastrophe. Hers or his own? He couldn’t be sure. He reached for her book, doing his best to ignore the rage welling inside him, threatening to spew forth, to lash out. _Do you still love me_? At the brush of her fingers, it was gone, slipping back into the depths of his fractured soul. He was in need of her healing touch. Four years was too long to be in a constant state of emotional starvation. He turned away from her, determined not to look back. The decision was hers.


	3. Not Like You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having fun with this writing style. :) I'm glad you guys are enjoying it. RIP to Greg's love, Poppy's ruthless.
> 
> Song:  
> Gangsta by Kehlani

**Not Like You**

Poppy drove slow, creeping along the winding mountain path as reticently as her heart had dragged its lead feet away from his memory years ago. She’d been rash today, and was as of yet unsure if she’d made another wrong turn in the road of her life. She couldn’t help but feel like she’d made an ill-thought out, over corrected U-turn at the last moment, racing back to the spot from which it’d taken her so long to travel from.

Gregory was the type of man that harvested happiness wherever he walked, his words admired yet only acknowledged personally in blushed murmurs. He was humble, and quiet in a way she’d never known. When they sat in the sweet serenity of silence reading side by side she felt tranquility. It had taken her two years. Two long years of constantly questioning whether his silence hid discontentment or some horrible secret he couldn’t stand to voice to her, before she realized there was nothing more to Greg than what floated on the surface. Every time she delved deeper, certain he must be another iceberg she could tear herself open and sink herself with; she was always conflicted to find a lack of skeletons in his closet, no monstrosities awaiting her under his bed. _What you see is what you get._ He’d assured her tilted, muddled head. Why had that afflicted her? As though she’d spent so long stitching Tora back together with her love she was unsure how to handle a heart that wasn’t draped in frayed, stained or torn cloth. To both her dismay and delight, there was nothing broken to mend here.

When she’d read his first manuscript, she had felt like he had written it only for her eyes, the syntax and sentence structure speaking to her like the mother she’d never known. _Come, let me cradle your broken heart for a while_ , his book had whispered to her. Gregory had been perfect but he didn’t love like Tora, like her. She thought back to their third date, when he’d informed her as casually as commenting on the weather that he wanted to share her future.

_We stepped onto the subway & I asked you_

_If you knew how to dance._

_To dance as though every step was a heartbeat,_

_Every swing of your hips its own song._

_You smiled and asked if I knew how to write._

_How to write as though each letter were its own emotion,_

_As though every word were its own story._

_I smiled & said no._

_You asked if I knew how to dance_

_The way I had described._

_I smiled & said no._

_I only know how to love as though each touch were our last_

_And each breath were a poem._

_I asked if you knew how to love._

_You smiled & said,_

_Not like you._

_I love like a tide that has yet to rise,_

_Like a bird that can’t sing._

_I smiled and you asked if I could explain,_

_If I could form words to teach you how to love_

_The way I do._

_I smiled and said,_

_Not like you._

Poppy tightened her grip on the steering wheel as she ignored her phone, alerting her to another of his calls, willing herself to shed tears for him as easily as she had shed his love. Yet like a snake detaching from its molted skin she had known in her heart he had only ever been temporary, like an ill-fitting band aid over a seeping wound. Despite her mind’s effort to find contentment in Greg’s arms, her heart cried out in the night for the man with demons behind his eyes. The beast that held her as gently as a still pond holds a lily pad. Although others might smile upon her, stopping long enough to sample the sweetness of her fragrance, she would always only ever be _his_ flower; to pluck and hold, to water or let wilt as he pleased. Poppy sighed, muttering to herself: _Greg loves me Tora, but not like you._


	4. Sooner Or Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the real plot begins. Thanks for baring with me on this one. Writing a story through poetry without coming across as pedantic (I hope) while moving the story along is challenging but I'm enjoying it. For those of you waiting on "What's with this girl?" the final chapter will be up sometime before noon tomorrow. I'm going to focus on requests for awhile and catch up on those before giving you my next story I think. *I think* being the key words there, I already have a few plots I'm trying to decide between as to which to write next. 
> 
> Huge thanks to everyone who reads my shit. Y'all are the reason for my smile today. Mad love. ♥
> 
> Song:  
> I don't wanna love her by Brinck

**Sooner Or Later**

Tora looked down at his phone before slipping it back into the depths of his pocket. The city twinkling below him, each brilliant light reminding him of a different memory of her smile. Ten minutes. Ten minutes before he would know if he would get to wake up next to the sun again or spend the rest of his existence in shadow. He was fairly certain she would come. He wished she wouldn’t. Not for his sake, but for hers.

Walking away from her had been an exercise in futility, like hollowing out his own chest cavity with a dull spoon, he had tried to eviscerate memories of her from his brain with a twister of drugs. The pain of remembering what he’d had and lost so much worse than any other twisted phantom that came to haunt and torment his mind. He’d died that night. The night Vince had beckoned him like so many others before. The night she had grasped at his clothing with fingers too weak to stop him, begging him with tears in her eyes not to go. To stay cocooned in the warmth of her embrace, to stop returning to his origin, his creator, his tormentor. That night like a thousand before, when his blood ran too hot and his hands itched for action. It had only been a matter of time. A question of sooner or later, before he wasn’t looking over his shoulder at the right moment. The bullet had caught him by surprise, much like waking up in the hospital, a doctor explaining he’d been shot in the head but unable to explain to him who he was. Perhaps more aptly, _what_ he was. Vince had told him, after coming to collect him, Tora only able to see the parallels with the way he had chosen him as a child once his memories had begun to return months later. Like everything else, the doctor had told him soberly that rebirth was only a matter of sooner or later.

Recollections had returned in trickles, each more horrifying than the last. Remembering her had only come _much_ later, the lone welcome ghost to walk the haunted corridors of his memories. She had been a longed-for spec of hope in a sea of despair. After all, sooner or later:

_Someone_

_you could not have_

_ever dreamed of_

_appears like a rainbow_

_bridging clouds, and_

_Steals_

_Your breath away,_

_Someone beautiful,_

_Inside and out,_

_Grabs hold of_

_Your_

_Hand, guides you_

_Along a rarely traveled_

_Road to a place_

_Where your broken_

_Heart_

_Can be mended, piece_

_By beating piece._

_The cost, gratefully_

_Afforded, is only,_

_Your Love._

He had sought her out immediately; desperate for her, like a child sought comfort in its mother, he wanted to thrust the broken pieces of his soul into her lap and demand she glue them back together. To ease his suffering. To cradle his fractured mind and forgive him every sin he had to relive anew. She hadn’t been where he’d left her though. The apartment they’d shared, abandoned. The walls of their home empty and bare like the shell of his mind when he’d first breathed on his own again. He reflected on when he had finally glimpsed her once more, after hunting her through the city like the beast he was named for.

_I found her again in a used bookstore,_

_Fingering the book located right between_

_Plato Republic and Tolstoy’s War & Peace_

_Her face like the faded cover of the book she slipped from the shelf_

_Well-worn from sleepless late night reading and too many tears._

_Feeling lost I found strength in the sad set of her shoulders_

_As though she felt the loss of ‘us’ as heavily as I_

_Like destiny, I wanted to_

_Collide again,_

_Among the dust_

_Of long ago memories_

_Shifting through pages_

_Of lessons on love, life, laughter and her morality._

_As she ran her fingers reverently along the spine the way I wished to do to hers_

_I was struck with the notion that after all my searching,_

_I had finally_

_Found her._

_I was home._

_In this crooked bookstore,_

_On fifth and main._

_Until he appeared, coloured in happiness,_

_To kiss her._

He had walked away then, unsure if the bliss he felt when he was with her was as mutual as he remembered. Certain his shattered mind was trying to trick him into believing it for the sake of his hopeless heavy heart. Quincey had assured him he had made it through before, that he could handle and suppress his memories and emotions the way he had previously; the first time he’d lived them.

But what the other man couldn’t grasp was that that had been _before_ he’d loved her; before he’d known the brilliance of her smile, the warmth of her heart and the shelter of her embrace. Not having her life in his hands, her love, was the final straw, the string that had been pulled too taut his whole life had finally snapped. Breaking what little was left of his mind and his heart.

Funny.

Despite how many people said it.

He didn’t feel lucky to be alive.


	5. Damaged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god the song. ♥ Also you guys are amazing I love the commentary and everything you guys pick up on :) 
> 
> Song: Figures by Jessie Reyez

**DAMAGED**

When she crested the last peak, her headlights illuminating the comforting silhouette of his frame she hesitated to put the vehicle in park. As though the shifting of the gear would solidify her decision. There was no going back. She shut off her high beams and they made eye contact through the insect speckled glass and the hazy smoke of his cigarette. She was tempted to reverse, the pain of seeing the unguarded look of longing in his eyes inspiring the sensation of suffocation within her. He had left her. So why did he look so betrayed? Collecting the scattered pieces of her courage, she watched as her hand put the car in park, pulling her keys from the ignition for safe measure, to give him time to _catch_ her should she give in to her instinct to flee.

She sat there for a moment that stretched eternity, staring into the eyes she’d thought she’d never see again. She had never known heartbreak like this. Slaked in the belief he was naught but a corpse had been easier on her. The burn of her tears erupted with as little warning as Mount Vesuvius had given the citizens of Pompeii. How dare he abandon her while there was still air flowing in his lungs?

_Hunched over,_

_She cries_

_A heap of_

_Tangled hair_

_& wet tears_

He watched, making no move to approach as her sobs wracked her body. Finally, she climbed from the metal cart that had carried her to him, slamming the door with all the force of the fiery rage lapping at her heart that now threatened to consume her. “Figures, I gave you ride or die and you gave me shit! Tell me Tora, how in the _fuck_ would you feel if you couldn’t get me back?” She screamed at him, taking comfort in the way his cigarette tumbled from his lips in stunned surprise. She’d matured between his fingers and his absence but was still prone to the emotional outbursts she’d suffered when she’d still called him hers. She wanted to hurt him back, to drag his heart through the turmoil she’d suffered after his disappearance.

“Sorry,” he whispered. The one word filled with regret for every trespass he’d ever made against her.

Sorry? He was sorry? He’d spoken it as though it were a peace offering, an inconsequential sacrifice to the god of wrath that possessed her. “You’re sorry? You’re fudging _sorry_? What happened to ‘I’ll never leave you woman’? What happened to _forever_?” She shrieked at him with all the misery that seeped from the freshly flayed scar tissue on her heart. “How could you walk away from something so special? Something so real?” She cried, her voice echoing off the walls of the pavilion that had once been a place of comfort to them both but had now been reduced to their battle ground.

“Because you did.” He spat, his words stabbing her, twisting through her as deeply as his disappearance.

Poppy stared at him wide eyed in utter disbelief. “I thought you were dead… Was I supposed to be alone and mourn you forever?” She whispered brokenly. Didn’t he know she had only ever been his? That the only part of her that knew how to love had been carved out that night? Did he really not know what she carried beneath her clothes? Beneath her skin?

_I have an unpleasant scar,_

_It sits right between my ribs,_

_Given to me by a man who growled, burning for me like a lit cigar;_

_That if I accepted his love, gifting my own in return,_

_He would not hurt me._

_Although to me this was a grave contradiction considering ‘his love’,_

_Scarred me more on the inside than_

_The blade he held to my heart could ever relay._

_The thing that disturbs me most however,_

_Is not how I got the scar,_

_But that my Granny has not once asked, Never._

_Not that I could bring myself to tell her,_

_Before her would stand a liar._

_But I wonder at least once every time I visit her,_

_If she can see the nightmares on constant re-play,_

_That have a habit of dancing behind my eyes,_

_I had wondered often if he did it on purpose._

_If he let his blade Slip,_

_In his heated frenzy to leave an imprint of himself,_

_Beneath my skin._

_I wondered often if it would fade,_

_The memories and the questioning looks I get from my Grandmother,_

_He acted_

_As though he needed to brand me as ‘unfit’ for any other._

_I wonder if my scar is a symbol._

_One that reads like a ‘DAMAGED’ label._

_My Granny never asks,_

_About the unpleasant scar,_

_…on my heart._

She didn’t need to wonder anymore. Everything Tora ever did was always with intent. It was irrelevant that she had spent months daydreaming about his death. Nightmares flooding her every waking moment. Her Granny always avoiding the gaunt state of her face and the topic of her heartbreak. She never asked which was fine because Poppy had never known.

She would find out tonight;

Just why he had thrown away her love,

Despite having carved his name into her soul.


	6. Inferno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So first off, to those who refer to me as 'curvy' (there are a few of you) thank you hahaha, I love the nickname :P I know "TheCurvedWritingDesk" is a mouthful :P Second, thank you for supporting me through this little writing challenge I've given myself. I know it's quite a bit different from my regular writing style. Let me know what you think! ♥
> 
> Songs:  
> Lover I Don’t Have To Love by Bright Eyes (Tora)  
> Sad Boys by Fionn (Poppy)

Twin spotlights illuminated the darkness surrounding him before retreating, leaving only low lights to spill over his feet and her eyes to pull him back into her orbit. Unable to look away Tora found his self-worth reflected in her chocolate brown depths. He’d missed this mirror, the one that let him see himself and the world in a different light. He placed his cigarette back between his lips, drawing on it, the flame, like her resolve, crackling under the force of his pull. He only exhaled when she broke their gaze, dipping her head to unrobe her pain. He let her cry; watching on with morbid interest as she mourned what she’d just lost. 

She was bound to him; she the moth to his flame, the heat of his love destined to forever burn her. He’d spent the last few years stuttering and stopping, trying to simultaneously douse his fire in both water and gasoline. Perhaps if he burned bright enough, she’d spot him in the dark and come searching for the source of the light. Yet, in the same vein, he’d tried so many times to put out his own flame. Every attempt made with the motivation of saving her further injury. Today though, he’d burned too bright, sparking the light to draw her in once more. She’d come searching, ever desperate to immolate herself with his love. When she finally got out of the car, she did not behave the way he expected. “Figures, I gave you ride or die and you gave me shit! Tell me Tora, how in the _fuck_ would you feel if you couldn’t get me back?” she screamed at him, with all the fury of a woman on fire.

Her words rocked him, like a violent wave against a small boat in the open ocean, he was helpless to stop it from pulling him under, back to the hell he’d inhabited in her absence. His mouth slackened at her words, his cigarette tumbling from his lips. He knew exactly how he’d feel. Her theoretical question his all too tangible reality the last few years. He would go on feeling numb, as though he were drowning in shattered ice water, the shards impaling him as they flooded his windpipe, choking off his air. Each one a memory of _her_. 

He’d feel, “Sorry,” he whispered, the word hollow and much too shallow, only scrapping the surface of the remorse that consumed him. Did she have any idea what it felt like to lose your own heartbeat? To have it skitter and stumble over different lovers as he tried like Frankenstein to fit pieces of them together? This one having her hair, that one her hips, but none could ever match the reflection of her eyes, or the beauty of her smile. The women he’d taken to bed since her, only a shadow of her essence, like the images on Plato’s cave wall, when he was high enough, if he squinted he could almost see her in the imperfect curve of their bodies. Other times, the trip was so bad his flame struggled to flicker in his oxygen deprived state.

Drowning.

He was always drowning in Dante’s ninth circle of hell.

Her face forever echoed across that damn frozen lake.

“You’re sorry? You’re fudging _sorry_? What happened to ‘I’ll never leave you woman’? What happened to _forever_?” she shrieked, her cries tearing at the fire wall he’d built to shield her. “How could you walk away from something so special? Something so real?” She cried, ripping the remnants of his patience to shreds.

“Because you did.” He exploded, the force of his flames shaking the earth beneath her feet, scorching her for the first time since he’d imposed the undesired distance between them. Utterly convinced the ill-conceived idea would breed safety and bloom happiness for her.

“I thought you were dead… Was I supposed to be alone and mourn you forever?” She whispered brokenly. He struggled to find sympathy. Like a bastardized game of Where’s Waldo, finding him would not have been that hard. After Vince had released him, he’d never gone far. Always holed up with Quincey when he wasn’t playing the part of a library book too frequently checked out, lending his body to her look alikes. He waited for the question he knew was coming, like an unavoidable tsunami brought on by the aftershocks of his earthquake.

“What happened to _us_?” She begged.

_I gave you up cold turkey,_

_Like Alcoholics Anonymous_

_Preaches the avoidance_

_Of Martinis and Whiskey on the rocks_

_I fell away from you_

_On a cold night in June_

_We stopped talking_

_Because I stopped calling_

_All I ever got was a busy tone_

_I begged you to answer the phone_

_Too many times,_

_You ignored me._

_You were always ,_

_With him._

_I miss you._

_Miss the way we used to stare at each other in silence,_

_As though quiet were comfortable._

_I miss the way we used to dance,_

_Bodies swaying to a thunderstorm of drums,_

_But I guess that’s what happens in love,_

_You hit the double forte crescendo_

_And the only place left to go is down._

_Like the pianissimo at the end of the Mozart concerto_

_We used to listen to together,_

_I let you fade out of my life._

_I miss you._

_But that song is over played._

_Time to change the track._

_It’s about time you came back._

It was about time she knew. “I got shot. And the bullet obliterated us.”


	7. Evisceration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on chapter nine, hoping to wrap up this story next week. Thanks for all your support guys, this one is formatted a little differently than the others. The stuff in italics is one long poem broken up by Tora's speech. Poem is meant to be his background thoughts. Not sure if that comes across clearly or not (I don't have a beta) so thought I'd just clarify so it isn't confusing. Anyways enjoy! I'd love to know what you think. HAPPY CHAPTER DAY!!
> 
> Side note: For those of you who enjoyed "A Perfect Fit" I'm tossing around the idea of turning it into its own little fic instead of just writing you a part two since so many people requested I continue it. Would be between 4-10? chapters. Planning on plotting it out today. ♥
> 
> Songs:  
> You Found Me by The Fray  
> Breakeven by The Script  
> Paralyzed by NF

“I got shot. And the bullet obliterated us, along with every other memory I ever had,” He growled, each word spearing her, the weight of this new knowledge crushing her as she stared on at him in resolute horror. Like a gambler making a bad bluff before tossing the dice, she wished with all her might she could retract the last four years and roll them again. When she just stood there, mouth open, too rattled to speak, he continued, “Spent a fuck ton of time in a hospital waiting for the swelling in my brain to go down and someone to come tell me who the fuck I was. Eventually Vince showed up, having got wind of some ass hat bragging he’d brought down the Tiger of Ares Street. He kept me for a long time, reminding me who I was…what I _am_.” He bit out bitterly.

_I woke up at 3am this morning,_

_And thought maybe I could write a poem about my life_

_Maybe I could get up here and tell you about the anger_

_And the way I hold on to pain like shipwreck victims hold onto life rafts_

_Maybe I could express the way I see myself,_

_And the way you all don’t notice that my heart starts pounding_

_And I stop breathing when someone asks me to ‘think back’_

“He took his time with me. Made me relive everything he’d ever done to me. Made me do horrid shit I had forgotten I was fucking capable of.”

_I talk back to authority figures,_

_And I talk about bullet trajectories and martial arts and physics_

_To change the subject_

_I make you think I’m tough_

_By speaking in grunts and by using my hands more often than my words_

_I command attention because I don’t want anyone to notice what_

_I’m hiding._

“Made me remember training that had taken years to drill into me over the span of a few months.”

_You see I don’t fit_

_In the well-adjusted box you’ve all put me in_

_I know what it’s like to not be able to focus in class_

_Because your stomach is growling so loudly it drowns out your teacher_

_And I know what it’s like to lie on the ground gasping for breath_

_Because your ‘_ father’s _’ boot is still imprinted in your gut_

“My childhood was a fucking trauma train wreck and he made me fucking remember every god damn minute of it. Starving me. Caging me. Beating me. Breaking me just so he could remold me the way he wanted. He did it all over again.”

_I know what it’s like to be a shell of a person_

_A lump of flesh sucking in & expelling air_

_Living only for the next command._

“He reminded me what it meant to be an animal. To be his dog. To be a fucking Tiger. To mawl people. To kill them. To be a symbol of fear and death to fucking everyone I met. To never be given the chance to be seen as anything else. To never be the man I was with you.”

_I know what it’s like to want to run away_

_And realize you never grew the wings everyone else seems to fly on_

_I know what it’s like to hear cries in the night_

_And know that at five years her senior_

_You still haven’t grown into the man she needs._

“I came to find you, as soon as he released me. As soon as I convinced him I was the machine he remembered. So you could remind me of my own humanity. So I could remember was it was like to be looked at as something more than what I was. What I am. But you were already with him. Had already moved on. When I asked Quincey why. He said you’d thought I was dead. That _he_ had thought I was dead. You seemed _happy_. Carefree. The minute he touched you in that good damn bookstore on fifth and main and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fuck up your life again and beg you to come back. To love me. To touch me. To sit up at night with me and chase away my fucking living nightmares. You didn’t and you don’t deserve that. All the waiting. All the dinner parties and plans I wrecked by having to leave to go do something you’d never be able to stomach if I confided in you about it.”

_But I don’t talk about these things_

_Just like I don’t talk about the medication I’m taking_

_Because there are worse things that I just don’t fucking think about_

“I just got fucked up after that Bobby. Every day I just put shit up my nose to make myself forget. To make it easy for someone to come along and put me out of my god damn misery for good. ‘Cause I couldn’t take it. The idea that I’d lost you. After all the bullshit I’d been through, you were my only good memory, and the fact I was only gonna make more bad ones, more nightmares without your light in my life to balance it all? Fuck that. Wanna know the most fucked up part though? Vince released me. I’m fucking free now. Told me he didn’t have time for ‘a useless pile of shit too high to carry out orders’. He’d finally succeeded in breaking me and he tossed me to the side like garbage. He doesn’t give a shit about me anymore. Didn’t even bother to put a fucking hit on me.”

_I woke up at 3am this morning_

_Thinking maybe I could write a poem about my life_

_That maybe I could express the way I see myself_

_But now, I’m coming out_

_I’ve told you these things_

_And maybe, just maybe you’ll_

_Accept me for me_

_And not just the mask you see_

“I decided I was just gonna kill myself, finish what that fucking bullet had started four years ago. But I had to see you first. I watched you for days and I realized; I didn’t wanna die. Not if there was a chance I could still have your love. Now that I’m not the fucking ‘Tiger of Ares Street’ no more. So like a selfish asshole, I told ya to come back. Knowing I was just gonna fuck up your life all over again and hurt him. Your new man; but Bobby, I don’t give a shit, about any of it. ‘Cause you’re here and I’m assuming that means your mine again?” 

_Cause I play hide and seek_

_With my memories_

_Forgetting the ones_

_I don’t want to be,_

_A part of me._


	8. Broken Brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'm almost done dragging out the heartbreak. Time for a poem from Quincey. Two chapters to go. (I've finished writing it, just editing) ♥  
> As always, let me know what you think! :)
> 
> Songs:  
> If You See Kay by The Script  
> Let Her Go by Passenger  
> You by Elijah Woods & Jamie Fine

Poppy pressed her hands over her heart in a futile attempt to keep it from falling apart, as though if she kept enough pressure on it she’d be able to prevent it from shattering. She hadn’t known, oh god she hadn’t known. She’d never thought to look for him in hospitals, clan business always insisting injuries be dealt with internally. She’d scoured Ares Street though, too many times, attempting to be a lighthouse shining for him in a sea of darkness. Brushed shoulders with dangers she dared not voice to him now in her hope of discovering him. When Quincey had told her he’d had no luck in obtaining the location of his whereabouts either, she’d dismayed and despaired. Like grieving siblings they’d held a vigil for him, bonding deeper than family through their pain of losing him. Her heartbreak paused the moment she remembered Quincey. Her mind latching on to one sentence Tora had uttered like a spider ensnaring an unsuspecting fly, turning it over in her mind. He’d said, ‘when I asked Quincey why’ which meant he’d known, at some point of Tora’s resurrection, Quincey had been Lazarus to his second coming. “Why didn’t Quincey tell me!” she cried feeling deeply betrayed, her pain held at bay only by the intensity of her rage.

Tora’s eyes searched hers, desperate for forgiveness, “I told him not to, that he could only tell you I was alive if things didn’t turn out with your new man,” he whispered, “I was actively trying to kill myself. I didn’t want you to see me like that. You were the only pill I didn’t have the strength to swallow.” He admitted in shame.

Poppy’s eyes snapped open wide, remembering a poem from Quincey’s journal she’d stumbled upon as accidentally as a crack in the sidewalk while beta reading for him. She’d taken a picture, reading it over, the poem resonating with her, stirring emotion she could not name. She knew it was important, impactful, meaningful in a way she could not describe. She’d read it so many times, recalling it now was as easy as breathing. Of course, it had been about him. Everything Quincey had written since Tora’s disappearance had been hopeless tragedy, all his characters only, ever, always, one step away from true love, yet he always left it...unobtained.

_ Broken Brother _

_“I want to kill myself” he whispers_

_As I pretend to be asleep on the couch_

_I know I should get up and comfort him_

_Hold his heartbeat in my hands,_

_Tell him I love him._

_But I can’t._

_His maelstrom of emotion,_

_A roller coaster._

_His mind,_

_A mangled mess torn apart by a_

_Twister of drugs._

_Addoral, ketamine,_

_dimethaldriptamine_

_“I want to kill myself” he says a little louder_

_And secretly I wish he’ll do it already_

_Take an overdose of the cocktail_

_He shoves up his nose_

_Coke & crushed oxy,_

_Recipe for a heart attack,_

_“I want to kill myself,”_

_He shouts with tears in his eyes._

_I clench mine tighter_

_As I hear him open the baggy,_

_Crush the tablets,_

_Cut the straw,_

_I still have time, I just have to open my eyes._

_I hear him inhale_

_They slid open. Too late._

_The twister has him flying._

_He’s closed his eyes._

_High on the wrong drug._

_All he really needs_

_Is a dose,_

_Of her love._

Poppy snapped; like the branch that had cracked under her weight the night he’d caught her all those years ago. Her knees no longer capable of supporting her she broke under the weight of her own absence in his life. She had been his only safe refuge and she’d been as inaccessible to him as choosing his own career path. Like the hoodie he’d given her with too many lose threads, the pain of it was unravelling her. “I never stopped loving you!” she cried, face buried in her hands, “I was always ever only _yours_! I was in _so much pain_ Tora! I love _you_ , I’ve only ever loved _you_! You son of a fudge biscuit! Screw you for not giving me a choice! It was always my decision to make, to _love you_ despite everything. How could you doubt me?” She screamed with all the anguish she’d felt the moment she’d extinguished her flame, convinced she would never burn for another human being again.

Tora stepped towards her, all his careful caution forgotten as he swept her into his arms. Holding her felt like coming home, like Odyssus after his lifetime at sea, he was finally docked, moored to the one and only place he had ever felt truly happy. “Forgive me, I let you go out of love, all I’ve ever been was bad for you,” he whispered, “but I’m never letting you go again.” He promised.

She gazed up at him sorrowfully, her hands threading into his hair as they had a thousand times, his mouth closer than it had been in years, yet still too far away, “kiss me?”


	9. Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there. Last chapter tomorrow. :) I'm gonna post a request later today and tomorrow I'll be posting the continuation of "A perfect fit" under a new name. 
> 
> Songs:  
> I Wanna Get Better by Bleachers (Tora)   
> It’s Alright by Mother Mother (Poppy)   
> Strawberries and Cigarettes by Troye Sivan

“Kiss me?” she pleaded. He couldn’t, not yet. Like Prometheus gifting fire to mortals, he was determined to do this the way he’d planned no matter how much pain it caused him. He shook his head, the shockwaves of his refusal causing her tears to fall harder as she pressed forward stubbornly, determined to give him as little choice in the matter as he’d given her in their separation.

“Poppy, wait,” he pleaded, knowing he didn’t have the strength to deny her a second time. “Not here. Come with me,” he implored her, pulling her to her feet and over to his car, gently guiding her into his passenger seat, into the chair she’d occupied so often he was surprised it hadn’t been molded for her.

Poppy cried, this time out of frustration as his sweater slipped from her grasping fingers, reminding her of the night she’d lost him. Why was she never strong enough to hold onto him? He reappeared beside her a moment later, throwing the red sports car in reverse, taking the curves as slowly as he planned to trace hers once he got them to their destination. He drove, blissfully unaware of the heat his presence was stoking in his ex-lover. Her lust a starving animal, barely contained by its cage. She’d gone without him for much too long.

_Quincey told me,_

_Lust is easier for women_

_Than it is for men._

_At this I was shocked_

_And immediately pitied_

_My opposite sex_

_I could not – cannot_

_Imagine something worse_

_Than what I go through_

_How I burn for you,_

_In a fashion unladylike I’m told,_

_How I am instantly aroused_

_At the sound of your voice_

_How my mind wanders_

_Like I wish your fingers would_

_How I physically ache to be near you_

_To watch the colours that dance in your eyes_

_When you said we had to ‘wait’_

_It nearly killed me_

_Blood rushing_

_Heart pounding_

_So close to tears_

_I thought I was drowning_

_My lust can’t be shackled_

_My lust can’t be tamed_

_I’m haunted by visions_

_Of you in my brain_

_Bodies tangle_

_Skin radiating heat_

_Nothing more than my dreams._

_Quincey told me once_

_That lust is easier on women than_

_It is on men._

_I’m not sure,_

_I believe him._

The silence stretched between them, “I forgive you,” she whispered, “You’re human, it’s alright, it’s okay. I forgive you for being a fool.” She cried. Tora grinned at her, the brilliance of his smile eviscerating her pain, he was finally hers again, back from the grave.

“You’re all I need Bobby, you’re instant fuckin’ rehab.” He told her, certain she must know she had always been his drug of choice; her love infinitely better than strawberries and cigarettes, the taste always reminding him of her.

“Where are we going Tora?” She begged, needing to know how long her torture would last.

“Home Bobby,” _back to the place I lost you_ , he thought.


	10. Beloved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Et voila, fini. This was a fun little writing challenge. :) I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I'd love to read what you think of it as a whole. The first poem is from Poppy, the second from Tora. 
> 
> Songs:  
> Poetry by Wrabel  
> Crash into me by Dave Matthews Band (Tora)  
> It’s All Coming Back To Me Now by Celine Dion (Poppy)

Poppy ran her fingers gently along the frame as she admired the painting within, she was in awe, struck mute by the level of detail he had put into recreating what she’d thought was lost forever. When he’d pulled into the parking lot of her old apartment building, she’d been confused. When he’d lead her to the door she’d been apprehensive and when he’d opened it for her and nudged her over the threshold she’d been speechless. She had torn this place apart herself. Like a tornado she had decimated the rooms he had so carefully pieced back together.

Tora watched with quiet nervousness as her eyes swept the contents of their old apartment. It wasn’t perfect, his memory still fuzzy on the small things, the things he had never bothered to pay much attention to when he was with her, but had grown to frustrate him in the middle of the night when he was alone here, trying desperately to remember. Her. In this space. Touching her things. Touching him.

Poppy circled the memories, everything only slightly off, like a marginally crooked painting, everything was right yet somehow wrong. The quote on the wall was higher than she remembered, the backwards books on the shelf the wrong width, the colour of the comforter off by a shade. Yet it was home. Like the people who had once lived here, everything was different and yet, everything of importance was the same. “Why?” she whispered, her eyes falling on the man who had forced her to time travel back to the place she’d abandoned. The space that had been too hard to occupy without him.

Tora shrugged, “I’m a masochist and it made me feel closer to you?” he guessed, still unsure of exactly why he had driven himself to such a desperate act of longing. “Helped me remember…you…us…what we had.” He breathed as his hands itched to touch her. To relive the moments that kept him restless and yearning at night. “Say you’re mine again Poppylan.”

“Tora,” she breathed, at long last closing the distance between them, whispering words of love to him.

_I apologize for not waiting for you_

_For not having more self-restraint_

_I knew he wasn’t you when his lips_

_Touched mine._

_I apologize,_

_For giving away what I now offer to you._

_Please forgive me, my heart was bruised._

_You see the first time,_

_Yes there were more than a few._

_I had no choice,_

_I silenced the voice_

_That told me ‘he’s not you’_

_Hands on my body in places only you’d ever touched_

_Words I didn’t mean, whispered in shame_

_My love crashing to the ground on the wings of a paper plane._

_I listened to women talk about the act,_

_In washrooms, in parks, in places like that_

_They talk about soaring, reaching the sky_

_There was never something so lovely between he & I_

_Only a foreign pulse between my thighs._

_And so, I gave it away,_

_To the man who claimed to love me_

_The one that would eventually beg me to stay,_

_My back turned as I walked away,_

_Because I knew,_

_He wasn’t you._

_You see, I tried to convince myself,_

_My loyalty and fidelity could come off the shelf,_

_Instead I tucked them away in a drawer_

_Where I had to face them no more_

_That voice that called to remember who I adore_

_But I swear that, I didn’t forget, for_

_Since you I’ve never soared._

_Because I’ve always ever only been yours._

“Remind me how to feel, how to love,” she begged as his hands moved over her once more.

_Dressed in silence,_

_Slowly we unclothed ourselves._

_Layer by layer_

_Until nothing remained_

_But the nakedness_

_Of words and_

_Reunion._

“Poppy, I love you,” he whispered, at long last her lover once more, “I missed ya.”

_And you were beautiful._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that inspired this entire fic: Your Ex-lover Is Dead by Stars (worth a listen if you're inclined)


End file.
